A COMMUNITY chest of £25,000 is to be put aside by a council to provide grants to groups in part of County Durham.

Organisations in Chester-le-Street will be able to apply for minor awards worth up to £250 and major awards of up to £2,000.

Chester-le-Street District Council currently gives senior citizen groups about £6,000 a year, but councillors have agreed to find an extra £19,000 a year.

The chest is likely to be funded by the sale of municipal land and council houses.

The idea is to strengthen existing or help develop new community activities to bring people in the district together.

In January, councillors considered a report which highlighted weaknesses within the existing grant scheme for senior citizen organisations.

There was no official grant allocation process, or written policies, guidelines or criteria against which the merits of each application could be assessed.

This meant the same organisations were receiving a consistent level of funding each year and the number of new applications was limited.

Councillors hope the community chest will support new and emerging community development groups.

Leisure services manager Ian Simon said: "Through offering opportunities to a wider range of groups, the Community Chest Fund would help reduce the risk that worthy schemes and projects may not be able to obtain support.

"There is a risk that some groups could become dependant on funding from the council and that a small number of organisations could receive regular support and thereby deny new groups access to this funding.

"Funding criteria has been developed to prevent this situation from developing."

Applications must benefit people who live in the Chester-le-Street district, but grants will be for no more than half of the total cost of the project.

Organisations can only app-ly for funding once in any financial year for minor awards and once every two years for major awards. Priority will be given to groups which have not received awards before.

Consideration will not be given to individuals, profit-making organisations, statutory bodies, such as parish councils, or religious groups.

Applications will be considered on a quarterly basis in April, July, October and January.